Professor Zöllner,.

"I Shook Hands with a Friend from the other World."

We will now cross from England to Germany and see what the late Professor Zöllner has to say—a man who stood as high in Scientific attainment in Germany as does Sir Wm. Crookes in England to-day. His exalted status is indicated by the fact that he was Professor of Physical Astronomy at the University of Leipsic; Member of the Royal Saxon Society of Sciences; Foreign Member of the Royal Astronomical Society of London, and of the Imperial Academy of Natural Philosophers at Moscow, &c., &c.

For very many years he was engaged in the investigation of simi- page 31 lar phenomena to those inquired into by Sir Wm. Crookes, but with different mediums, and he published a work, entitled "Transcendental Physics," giving a very comprehensive record of his experiences and conclusions. These conclusions may be gleaned from the very gracefully-penned note to Sir Wm. Crookes, to whom he dedicates his book and which opens with these words:—

"With the feeling of sincere gratitude, and recognition of your immortal deserts in the foundation of a new Science, I dedicate to. you, highly honoured colleague, this third volume of Scientific Treatises. By a strange conjunction our Scientific endeavours have met upon the same field of light and of a new class of physical phenomena which proclaim to astonished mankind, with assurance no longer doubtful, the existence of another material and intelligent world. . . To you ingratitude and scorn have been abundantly dealt out by the blind representatives of modern Science, and by the multitude befooled by their erroneous teachings. May you be consoled by the consciousness that the undying splendour with which the names of a Newton and a Faraday have illustrated the history of the English people can be obscured by nothing; not even by the political decline of your great nation : even so will your name survive in the history of culture, adding a new ornament to those with which the English nation has endowed the human race. Your courage, your admirable acuteness in experiment, and your incomparable perseverance, will raise for you a memorial in the hearts of grateful posterity as indestructible as the marble of the statues of Westminster. Accept, then, this work as a token of thanks and sympathy poured out to you from an honest German heart."

Professor Zöllner had associated with him, in conducting his experiments, Professor Weber, known as the founder of the doctrine of the Vibration of Forces; Professor Scheibner of the Leipsic University, a highly-distinguished Mathematician, and Professor Fechner, eminent as a Natural Philosopher. These were the men who witnessed the phenomena I am about to relate, and who, like Wallace, Crookes, Lombroso, and others, were transformed from Materialist sceptics into confirmed believers in the existence of an unseen world and of the survival of the human personality after death.

And what was the nature of the phenomena which brought home conviction to these shrewd, exacting, level-headed men of Science—men who introduced every precaution against trickery and delusion that human ingenuity could possibly conceive? I will briefly summarise some of the more remarkable occurrences, as detailed in Zöllner's standard work, and it may be as well to point out that most of them took place in Zöllner's private house or in a University laboratory.

A single endless cord was procured by Zöllner—that is, a cord with its ends tied together and sealed—and in the space of a few minutes four knots were tied in the cord and these knots were of such a character that they could not be untied without cutting the cord. The experiment occurred in bright daylight and the seal and cord were all the time in sight. This phenomenon occurred several times at different sittings and the medium's hands were always in view and did not touch the string.

While some slate writing was going on, a bed, which stood in the room behind a screen, suddenly moved about two feet from the wall, pushing the screen outwards. The medium was more than four feet distant from the bed, had his back turned towards it and his legs crossed. At a subsequent sitting a violent crack was suddenly heard, as of the discharge of a large battery of Leyden jars, and the aforementioned screen fell apart in two pieces. The medium was sitting at least five feet from the screen, and "we were all astonished at this unexpected and violent manifestation of mechanical force, and asked the medium what it all meant, but he only shrugged his shoulders, saying that such a phenomenon occasionally occurred in his presence." A folding slate, purchased by Zöllner himself, was placed on the table, and as soon as the medium placed his hand on it, writing began on the inner surface, and when it was opened the following sentence was found in English—"It was not our intention to do harm; forgive what has happened."

On another occasion, in the morning, a large hand-bell which had been placed under the table where the medium could not possibly reach it, began to ring and was then "violently projected before all our eyes about ten feet distant." A small paper thermometer case was laid upon the slate and disappeared, and after three minutes re-appeared. Professor Scheibner took an accordeon in his hand when it began to play a tune without the medium touching it, and the bell under the table again rang violently. Suddenly a small reddish-brown hand appeared at the edge of the table, visible to all, and moved itself vivaciously for two seconds. This phenomenon was repeated several times. Whilst an open slate lay upon the floor under the table "writing, perceptibly with a slate pencil placed near at hand, began upon the slate and when it was raised there were on it the words—"Truth will overcome all error."

Regularly at almost all the sittings these Scientific investigators felt the touch of hands under the table, and in order to obtain proof of the presence of these hands a bowl was filled with wheat flour and placed under the table. "Suddenly," says Zöllner, page 33 "I felt my right knee powerfully grasped and pressed by a large hand under the table for about a second, and at the same moment the bowl of meal was pushed forward from its place under the table about four feet on the floor. Upon my trousers I had the impression in meal of a strong hand and on the meal surface of the bowl were indented the thumb and four fingers with all the niceties and structures and folds of the skin impressed. An immediate examination of the medium's hands showed not the slightest traces of flour, and a comparison of his own hand with the impression on the meal proved the latter to be considerably larger. The impression is still in my possession."

At a subsequent sitting a piece of coal the size of a fist fell suddenly from the ceiling, and half an hour later a piece of wood fell in a similar manner. One morning whilst Zöllner stood talking to Professor Scheibner "we saw my pocket knife," he says, "fly through the air and strike the forehead of my friend Scheibner with some force, the scar remaining visible on the following day. Since, at the time of the accident, I was conversing with the medium, and the latter had his back turned at a distance of about ten feet, the medium, at any rate, could not have thrown the knife at my friend's head."

This was exciting, no doubt, but the experiments which Zöllner treated as being of much greater importance were those in which permanent impressions of contact were left behind, as was the case with the impression of the hand in the bowl of flour. He, accordingly, placed a sheet of paper, covered all over with lampblack, under the table, when suddenly the board was pushed forward with force, and on inspecting it there was on it the impression of a naked left foot. The medium had his shoes and stockings on at the time and the impression of the foot on the paper was considerably larger than the medium's foot. The experiment was repeated at the next sitting, and the impression of the same left foot was left upon the blackened paper. "I have had this impression reproduced photographically on a reduced scale."

At a later sitting an even more remarkable result was experienced. Zöllner bought a folding slate and lined the inner surfaces with paper upon which he spread lamp black. He closed the slate and kept it on his own knees so that he could continually observe it. Five minutes later, in a brightly lighted room, he felt on two occasions the slate pressed down upon his lap without anybody touching it. Three raps on the table announced that all was complete, and when he opened the slate there was on the one side the impression of a right foot and on the other side that of a left foot.

On another occasion all the furniture in the drawing room was turned upside down, and the upright piano was lain prone upon the carpet flat on its face. "It required two strong men to lift up the piano and restore it to its proper position," says Zöllner.

Then he tells us of chairs being threaded on the arms of persons while they were firmly holding the hands of others. "I have seen the chairs on the arms of seven persons," he continues, "whose word I could perfectly trust, but I wished to make assurance doubly sure, so, at a recent seance, I tied two wrists together with a cotton thread. In three seconds the chair was hanging upon the arm of one and I found the thread unbroken. I then held the hand of the medium as firmly as possible in mine, and in an instant the chair, one of our cane seats with bent backs, was hanging on my arm. This beyond all doubt" he adds, "was matter passing through matter," but whether the wood passed through flesh and bone, or flesh and bone passed through wood, I have not yet been able to determine."

At noon on another day at his request a chair walked forward on two of its legs, placing itself at the table, travelling a distance of six feet, and pressed against his knee carressingly. "It was a weird spectacle," says Zöllner, "but it was also a very interesting fact, seen for ten or fifteen minutes by four persons without the possibility of trick or hallucination." "Then the light was turned off for a minute or so, during which time we heard rapid movements of a pencil and on re-lighting the gas we found on the marked sheet of paper the portrait of a deceased friend and a letter of more than a page in the well-known hand writing of a beloved child whose spirit often visits us. I have now from her hands five elaborate drawings and Jour letters, no one of which occupied two minutes under absolutely test conditions. No living artist could make the drawings in from ten to twenty times the time occupied in their production."

A materialised hand appeared at another sitting and pinched him so violently that he could not help crying out, and on a subsequent occasion Professor Weber's coat was unbuttoned by a visible and tangible hand, and his gold watch was taken from his pocket and placed gently in his right hand.

A small round table, at a later date, completely vanished from sight, and after the most rigid search it was nowhere to be found. Five or six minutes later, at a height of about 5ft., the lost table, with its legs turned upwards floated down in the air upon the card table, striking Zöllner so violently on the side of the head that he felt the pain for four hours.

Another very striking experiment proving the passage of page 35 a physical substance through matter was conducted as follows:—Two large wooden rings were tied together with cat-gut, and the knot sealed. Zöllner held the cat-gut at the other end and allowed the rings to dangle from the end of the table. The medium did not touch either the cat-gut or the rings. Zöllner requested the invisible operators to intertwine the two rings without injuring either the cat-gut or the rings. Shortly afterwards they heard a rattling sound. "To our great astonishment," he says, "we found the two wooden rings which, about six minutes previously were strung on the cat-gut, which was in complete preservation, encircling the leg of a small table," like a gipsy table, which was at the opposite end of the table at which the investigators were sitting. The table was afterwards photographed with the rings on its legs, as will be seen from the accompanying illustration.

One day Zöllner bought two shells from a dealer, and at a sitting placed the smaller shell under the larger, so that the smaller one was completely hidden, and without the medium touching the shells or being near them the smaller one was removed from its prison and placed in another part of the room—"another instance," says Zöllner, "of matter passing through matter." On being examined the small shell was so hot that Zöllner nearly let it drop.

"Nothing is more convincing of the operations of invisible intelligences," declares Zöllner, "than the transport of material bodies from a space enclosed on every side" and consequently he sought particularly for this form of evidence. One afternoon he placed a piece of money in a cardboard box and then firmly plastered it up with strips of paper, and although the medium did not touch the box, the coin was removed and deposited elsewhere in the room. On another occasion a large piece of slate pencil was placed inside a sealed-up box by some unseen agency. These experiments were frequently repeated and proved, Zöllner says, "the apparent passage of matter through matte? in a highly elegant and compendious manner." He then passes to the account of further facts observed by him which he avers "prove the intimate connection of another material world with our own and which may be considered, in general, as a confirmation of the numerous observations of Sir William Crookes and other physicists."

"One morning while standing in the room with the medium," he says, "we were sprinkled from above by a sort of drizzle. We were both wet on the head, clothes and hands, and the traces of a shower of perhaps one-fourth of a second duration were afterwards clearly perceptible upon the floor of the room." Shortly afterwards the ceiling and walls of the room became moistened, and "judging by the direction and form of the traces of water, they appear to have proceeded from several jets at the same time from a point in the middle of the room, perhaps 4ft. high above our heads."

On another occasion smoke arose in three different places with the smell of acid of sulphur and saltpetre. Two candles were placed under the table to see if the invisible beings would light them. "After we had waited for some minutes, smoke rose up again from under the table, almost from all sides, and at the same time one of the candlesticks, with the candle burning, hovered up above the edge of the table opposite to me," says Zöllner, "and after a few seconds it sank down again."

Now comes something very exhilarating! "Whilst sitting at a page 37 table one day a small handbell hovered down from the stand on which it stood, lay itself down on the carpet of the floor, and moved itself forward by jerks until it got under the table where it began ringing in the most lively manner, and a hand suddenly appeared, snatched the bell and placed it in the middle on top of the table" The hand appeared again at Zöllner's request, shook hands with him, and thus he says, "I shook hands with a friend from the other world" "It had quite a living warmth," he adds, "and returned my pressure heartily." After letting go the hand he got a slate, and held one end and the materialised hand held the other, and "I challenged it to a duel of strength," continues the Professor, "and in the frequent give and take I had quite the feeling of an elastic tug as though a man held hold of the slate at the other end. By a strong wrench I got possession of it." "I again remark," he emphasises, "that during all these proceedings the medium sat quietly before us, both his hands being covered and detained by my left hand and by the hands of the others."

The foregoing is a brief summary of the experiments conducted by this eminent German Scientist and his intellectual colleagues, and if the reader would like to know more about these marvellous phenomena, I must refer him to Professor Zöllner's work, "Transcendental Physics," from which I have reproduced what I have written.